


Alpha and Emissary

by Chiomi



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Laura Hale, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, POV Derek, POV Lydia, POV Multiple, POV Outsider, POV Scott McCall, POV Stiles, True Alpha Scott McCall, Vignette, Werewolf Conferences & Conventions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-02 03:11:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 6,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4043623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiomi/pseuds/Chiomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One hears rumors, seeping out of Beacon Hills on waves of smoke and blood.</p><p>And then one sees the True Alpha's Star Wars swim trunks.</p><p>The whole weekend is very unnerving.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Meghan

**Author's Note:**

> [This](http://helenish.tumblr.com/post/77389938076/lolafeist-i-just-want-scott-and-stiles-to-be) post of Helenish's set off this whole thing. Thanks to Tristan for the beta!
> 
> Probably never expect two fics in one day from me ever again, but find me on [tumblr](http://uswe.tumblr.com/) for vague updates.

Most of the conference attendees have checked in: most checked in early to have more time to socialize. The only ones who haven’t are the ones everyone wants to meet most, and Meghan wishes they’d hurry up. Check-in for the conference officially ended half an hour ago, and she’s only got another half hour on her shift. After that, it’s just humans on the front desk until morning, and they won’t know, well, anything. The True Alpha and his infamous emissary have been bumped up to the most expensive suite in the hotel, and it’s important that someone tell them who did that, and talk about the stuff that’s been provided for them in order of importance of the people and packs who paid for it.

Yeah, they’re celebrities and this is the first time they’re coming to any big werewolf conference, but they didn’t need to be this late to make an entrance.

Someone parks a shitty Jeep in the roundabout and two kids pile out, either not noticing or deliberately ignoring the valet. Meghan sighs, and straightens up. There are still some humans in the hotel this weekend, but they’re all stuck down at one end, and she doesn’t want to go through the whole spiel with dumbasses who’ll probably stare at her chest and resent not being allowed to use the pools.

“It’s not my fault the GPS died,” the taller one is claiming as they come through the doors.

“Totally your fault I’m stuck with a dumbphone, though,” the shorter one says, but he doesn’t look all that put out.

The doors finish closing, sending a puff of air across the lobby, as the shorter one smiles at Meghan and says, “Hi, sorry, we have reservations?”

She smells werewolf and ozone, and it’s like being hit by lightning. They’re _dorks_.


	2. Laura

Even after Chris called that Peter was dead and the only person he had a chance to bite was a biddable Omega who was utterly happy taking guidance, Laura still felt guilty for not trying to handle it herself. It was her fault that Moss from Sacramento was dead, her fault that a bunch of kids were traumatized. Finals shouldn’t have taken precedence over checking up on her uncle.

Guilt’s only part of what kept her away, though, even though she’s got several varieties of guilt to deal with. Chris was back with his wife, and it would just have been super awkward to try and live in the same town as them when they’d been all domestic. Plus Derek would probably have self-destructed more dramatically than his Russian literature degree.

So she just . . . didn’t go. She’d assumed that Chris would tell her if there was anything she needed to come back for and she got herself and Derek into therapy so that if they had to go it wouldn’t be awful.

By the time she’d heard about the Alpha Pack and the Darach terrorizing the town, there was a True Alpha in Beacon Hills and it was well and truly none of her business anymore.

Over the years, she kept an ear out for what was going on in Beacon Hills, but it only took three years before her concern got her accused of being a fangirl. She had to throw Sandy off the roof for that, of course, but it calmed something in her: Beacon Hills was still attracting a lot of shit, but the kid there who was kind of her fault was handling things, and she should really have stopped caring.

She ditched her Google Alerts for Beacon Hills and focused more of her energy on actually answering work emails, but, okay, it wasn’t her fault that Beacon Hills came up a lot at NAPCSS.

Properly it’s called the North American Peace and Conflict Studies Symposium, but calling it “naps” and blinking wide-eyed and saying she didn’t want to focus on conflict made Sandy look like she wanted to cry, so Laura hadn’t called it anything else since she was first invited.

Beacon Hills comes up because they’ve got an active nemeton, one of only a few in the country, the only one that’s not protected by old growth and a huge sprawling pack. It comes up because they took down the Alpha Pack, adopted two of their former number. The incredibly rare True Alpha made an even rarer kanima with his first Bite, and they didn’t even have to kill him after. The nerve-wracking Alan Deaton was his emissary, but he said one year that he was going back into retirement and no one from Beacon Hills was coming to NAPCSS until the new emissary felt like it. Deaton wouldn’t even confirm or deny that the new emissary was the former nogitsune they’d heard about.

In short, Beacon Hills comes up a lot because it’s an epic clusterfuck and werewolves like to gossip. At the official reception, it’s a common thread, because the True Alpha and his emissary are both supposed to be here this year, but they haven’t shown up yet. Laura smiles at Ralph from Chicago and flicks her hair over her shoulder to cover the fact that she’s looking at the door again.

Ralph smiles, because he totally knows. “So I heard you’re expanding upstate?”

“Yeah, we’re hoping to finalize negotiations this weekend. One of my betas is starting school next year, and somewhere in the suburbs would offer a lot more options in terms of letting him walk to school on his own.” She’s practiced this, so it doesn’t even sound like she’s picking her words carefully. It’s so stupidly important to not look weak, especially this early. Too many people enjoy seeing the Hales brought low. They need to have a place that’s not the city because her pack’s still young and needs room on the full moon, but that’s only one reason, and she needs to talk about any reason that’s not that one. It’s only okay to be young and unstable if you’re some mythical hero. Even then, it’s not like anyone was popping around to Beacon Hills just to say ‘hi.’

The ballroom door opens, and all attention in the room snaps in that direction. Two men - young men, barely more than kids - spill in, and the reaction is mixed. They don’t look like much, not really, cute but awkward, almost puppyish, one of them with a crooked jaw and dopey smile and the other one tripping over his own feet. But no werewolf relies on sight alone, so the non-magical humans in the room make themselves more obvious by their disappointment. The emissaries are a different sort of obvious, with a third of them abruptly gone from the room and the remaining ones riveted. Laura - and Ralph from Chicago - are drawn forward by something like tidal forces: the True Alpha smells like concentrated wildness and feels like pure clean power.

They both pull up short at the attention, and the emissary goes blotchily pink. The alpha recovers first and smiles blindingly, and Laura comes back to herself. “Sorry, Ralph,” she says, eyes on the alpha, “I need to go introduce myself - Beacon Hills stuff, you know.”

There’s a sort of wary stillness in the crowd, with everyone riveted on the pair but unwilling to approach them. Laura wades through the mess, and keeps an eye out for Derek, wherever he’s hiding. She nods respectfully at the True Alpha. “Hi, I’m Laura Hale - my family’s from Beacon Hills. You must be Scott McCall.”

“Hi,” he says, smiling like he’s lost.

“Hale, Hale,” the emissary says, looking lost in thought. “Any relation to that rogue alpha I firebombed?”

Laura smiles at him with an effort, because that whole situation is one of her greatest failures. “Yes, Peter was my uncle. Sorry we weren’t there to help.”

His eyes go sharp, and maybe that was a thought spoken deliberately to see how she’d react. Laura tries to keep her features even, no trace of challenge in them even though she won’t look down. The moment stretches, and then he nods sharply and stretches out a hand for a handshake. “Call me Stiles.”

It’s a shifty magic-users evasion - a show of distrust - and a treaty offering all in one, and she takes his hand both exhilarated and a little nervous of what she’s gotten herself into.

“Stiles!” The alpha looks kind of panicked, and then he looks around the room at their audience and swallows hard.

Laura’s heart gives a wild, panicked thump at the idea that he’s going to deny the treaty before they’ve even got it off the ground, deny any possibility of treaty. But the emissary, Stiles, just thumps him on the back with the hand he’d shaken Laura’s with, and a look passes between them. “So, Laura,” Stiles says, “we haven’t been able to figure out how to get Scott drunk since he got the bite. Any chance there’s some way around it here?”

Laura makes herself smile, and some of the tension drains from her shoulders. It’s an open admission of the kind of weakness and lack of knowledge and resources that would be off-putting in another pack, but these guys - even if half the stories are made up, they get this kind of social leeway. “Let me show you to the bar.”


	3. Stiles

Scott safely dispatched, Stiles bounces on the balls of his feet and surveys the crowd. They’d planned for some of this - the attention, if not for the fact that the Hale alpha would come to introduce herself right off the bat. According to plan, Scott’ll be a charming goober and Stiles will be an unpredictable spaz. Not that either of those are that much of a stretch, but Lydia had mocked his plan to be suave and elegant and Bond-like with a single perfect raised eyebrow and a really judgemental look at what he later figured out was ketchup on his nose.

Still, there are other components to the plan. No other treaties until at least Sunday, and those have to be negotiated in advance. Try to avoid talking about anything that happened in Beacon Hills, but overshare if anyone’s rude enough to ask directly. Stiles tries to remember the other parts of the plan, the ones about touching and not showing favoritism, as he looks around the room of ridiculous supernatural hotties. He comes around, and there’s a man at his elbow, close enough that Stiles should have fucking noticed. “Holy fuck,” he blurts. “Do all of you have to be ungodly attractive and creepy as Hell before you get turned?”

The man frowns at him, and even confused and slightly pissed off he’s the most beautiful person Stiles has ever seen, a perfectly proportioned face above a chiseled torso draped in a soft violet Tshirt. “We should talk.”

“Thanks but no thanks, Grumpy Cat. I have this whole don’t talk to strangers thing my dad drilled into me.” Okay, actually, the whole point of this weekend is to talk to strangers, but not strangers who sneak up behind him and are upsettingly gorgeous and want to get him isolated from his Alpha right off the bat.

“I’m Derek,” he says, like he begrudges the words.

“Good for you. I’m just gonna go find some food, so bye.”

“Hale.”

That changes things. “Ah.” He looks around. “Sure, let’s go.”

There are people he should meet, people he should talk to - he can feel magic in the room, and there are people eyeing him with a lot of intent. But Scott’s there, and he can make friends. Stiles will find him again in a bit, and be more mysterious for it. Maybe. Depends how many of the werewolves listen for him specifically. Derek leads him to the elevator, twitchy about guiding without touching.

Derek picks the floor, which is fine - it’s probably his room or something. He’d know better than Stiles about getting out of earshot, and it’s not like Stiles is defenseless if alone. Stiles lets himself be shepherded down the hall and into what looks like the Hales’ room, where Derek relaxes marginally and then just kind of stands awkwardly with his hands at his sides.

Stiles makes himself drop into the available chair, because he starts moving if he doesn’t have something to anchor himself to. “So what’d you want to talk about?”

“Why - you didn’t have to do that.” Derek looks like the words hurt him.

Stiles snorts. “We kind of did, dude. Your whole family’s buried there, and we didn’t want to make it a thing if you wanted to visit. We also didn’t want to play it like Scott blamed you guys for what went down with your uncle.” Which had been a fight - Scott hadn’t been a fan of the Hales as a group on principle, and the stuff Stiles had said about Scott’s dad to make him see the light had resulted in them not speaking for two days and Stiles almost getting eaten by a kelpie.

Derek crosses his arms, and it just kind of highlights that the dude is shredded. “We’re not good allies.”

Rolling his eyes, Stiles demands, “What, are you going to stab us in the back or something? Or are you talking about the fact that even though you guys are apparently bankrolling me and Scott’s hotel food and bar tab - holy shit, we’re in college, do you even realize how much we eat? - you’re apparently low enough on the food chain that you got listed after the person who gave us each a Starbucks gift card for $10?”

Derek winces. “Please don’t tell Laura?”

Stiles starts tapping at the arm of the chair to help him think. “Laura doesn’t seem like she’s super in denial - otherwise she’d have freaked out more about me talking about Peter. Which means - holy shit, dude, you didn’t tell her what you signed your pack up for?”

Derek’s mouth tightens. “Don’t call me dude,” he mumbles.

“Fuck,” Stiles says, and whips out his phone. “I have to tell Scott, we can’t -”

Derek grabs his wrist. “Don’t.”

Stiles looks down to Derek’s hand on him, then pointedly back up at his face. “Take your hand off me, dude.”

Derek drops his hand like it’s on fire and backs up across the room. “It’s fine. Scott doesn’t - Laura doesn’t need to know.”

“And why doesn’t your alpha need to know you made a potentially expensive diplomatic overture behind her back?”

“The money doesn’t matter,” Derek says, almost too quiet for human ears to pick up. “And she didn’t want to. If you’d rejected it because of Peter, it’d have looked worse for us. I thought even if you hated us, you wouldn’t turn down free food.”

Stiles slides his phone slowly back in his pocket. “You know the only thing dumber than werewolf politics? Leaving people in the dark about werewolf politics when they’re inevitably going to find out about them in a room full of people who can smell surprise.”

Derek twitches expressively.

Stiles sighs. “D’you wanna try to hammer out treaty details right now, which I’m authorized to do but doubt you are, or are we going to go back downstairs so you can start feeding me?”

Derek’s face scrunches up, and Stiles tries not to laugh. One thing he’s picked up on from Deaton is that werewolves are really intensely and weirdly into providing for people as romantic and diplomatic overtures both. Even if Deaton hadn’t come out with it, he’d probably have picked up on it from the sheer volume of restaurant gift cards that had been waiting for them at the front desk earlier. “Let’s go,” he says eventually.

He crowds even closer on the way back down, but Stiles isn’t all that put off. Derek - despite how offensive the comparison probably is - is a big fluffy puppy, and mostly reminds Stiles of some kind of retriever. When the doors to the elevator are closed, Stiles reaches out and draws his palm down the side of Derek’s neck, deliberately over-intimate. Derek stills and goes wide-eyed, just like Isaac does at any kind of non-violent contact.

Unlike Isaac, though, he doesn’t shy away in the aftermath. Derek presses close, backs Stiles to the wall of the elevator. He’s a line of solid heat on Stiles’ front, and Stiles’ magic leaps at the proximity. “You’re insane,” he breathes.

Stiles grins, a thrum in his blood from attraction and magic. “You like it.”

He dips his head and sniffs unsubtly.

The elevator dings open.

 


	4. Yasmin

There are people here with power, and even a couple with the tremendous power of a nemeton backing them, but Yasmin knows most of them, so it’s mostly a good way to find people in a crowd, since she’s too short to see over anyone else.

Then he comes in, and it’s like being hit by a summer thunderstorm: he crackles and changes all the air in the room, and she flees before she even sees what he looks like.

A few minutes later a couple of guys come out the same side door she’d used, and she almost asks if it’s safe to go back before she realizes that the one who just tripped on the flat carpet, the one who looks like he could be her son, is the emissary she’d fled from in the first place.

It’s deeply mortifying, because he looks like a colt, not used to the length of his limbs. The werewolf with him can’t be the True Alpha, because he’s refusing to touch the emissary even when he almost falls. It takes Yasmin a minute, but the eyebrows and good looks give the werewolf away as a Hale - meaning he’s Derek Hale, the only beta to ever reach a full shift. And the two of them are leaving together. Yasmin leans back against the wall, half-hiding behind the potted plant. She heads directly to the bar after. This weekend is going to be terrible.

 


	5. Scott

Scott’s wanted to wolf out and bite people since he started smelling other wolves. He’s aware that it’s just an instinct thing, and is trying to keep it under control. It’s just - there are a lot of alphas. The last time there were a lot of alphas they were all trying to kill him or get him to kill everyone he loves, and there were only five, then, not fifty.

Laura Hale smells sort of like Beacon Hills, which is both good and bad - it feels less like being out of his territory to be here, but she smells like Peter Hale and the wreck of the Hale House before the county bulldozed it. Stiles making her an ally right off the bat wasn’t the plan, not really - early, yeah, but once they got the lay of the land. It’s just like Stiles, though.

She’s pretty chill, at least, and takes him to the bar and orders them both shots of wolfsbane-laced Everclear. He downs it, then coughs. “Holy shit, that burns worse than the last time I got shot.”

A beta at the bar raises an eyebrow. “Does that happen a lot?”

He wants to say no, but questions should be discouraged and he should still seem approachable. “Only twice so far this year. Part of that’s probably because my emissary’s aim has totally improved, so it was just a pair of hunters tracking a kelpie that moved in on the lake.”

The beta falls back, looking horrified. Definitely not someone they’d want to consider for the pack, then. That’s not the primary goal of this weekend, anyway. No betas would be there if they weren’t trusted, invested in their pack.

Laura looks torn between horror and amusement, and orders another couple shots.

Scott opens his eyes wider and pouts, trying to show how betrayed he feels.

She laughs. “Don’t worry, they start going down easier.”

They toss them back at the same time, and Scott shakes his head violently, trying to neither cough nor cry. “You’re a filthy liar.”

She laughs again, and leans in. “So, time for real Beacon Hills horror stories. Is Finstock still at the high school?”

“Oh my God,” he says, and can’t resist talking about high school, even though he’s been out for years. Laura orders another round of shots while he’s talking about the time Finstock got shot. He skips the part where the nogitsune set it up, because she knows about Finstock, so this is a Finstock story, which should be more than enough to weird out the faint of heart even without the bits that reflect worst on them.

She orders another shot while he’s telling her about the time the kanima nearly died during a lacrosse game and Finstock wouldn’t stop blowing his whistle at the paramedics, and he realizes by the end of it, when he’s summing up with, “He got, uh, he’s better. Loads better,” that he’s a little tipsy.

Stiles is suddenly at his shoulder again, clapping him on the back and looking entertained. “I see we fixed your wolfy problem.”

He shoves his face into Stiles’ shoulder, wanting his uncomplicated scent instead of all these strangers. Stiles pets the back of his head until Scott pulls back to glare at him. Stiles smells of Hale. “Have you been canoodling?”

“Scotty, have you been monopolizing Laura? You should probably let her socialize, and go make friends.”

“But Stiles, she knows Finstock!” Scott puts his head back on Stiles’ shoulder, because Stiles has started scritching right at the base of his skull.

“Uh-huh, so get her number, because we’re gonna wanna talk to her anyway.” Stiles stiffens slightly. “Or her brother can just grope my ass and put his number in my phone. That works, too.”

Scott rolls his head to look behind Stiles, and the guy is pretty and kind of mean-looking, which probably means Stiles is already in love with him. He rolls his head back so his nose is smushed against Stiles, and takes a deep whiff. Then he sits up with a sigh, because he really should socialize. They’re networking or whatever. It’s important. “Yeah, okay, let’s meet more people. Sorry, Laura.”

He pushes away from the bar, delighted that he’s not completely steady on his feet. Laura waves him off. “We’ll see more of each other tomorrow,” she says easily.

Scott nods, and then goes to make the rounds of the room. He doesn’t touch anyone with his bare hands, not even the humans, not even the ones that smell like magic. It’s weird, that none of them smell as much like magic as Stiles, but they probably have more experience hiding it. Not a lot of people ask about Beacon Hills, thankfully. By the time they head up to their suite, he’s got a stack of business cards and a bunch of new numbers in his phone.

He showers off the scents of other people in the bathroom attached to his room, puts on his pyjamas, and crawls into Stiles’ bed. Stiles is reading email on his phone, and threads his fingers through Scott’s hair absently. Scott shoves his face into Stiles’ armpit and says, “Go to sleep.”

“Mm,” says Stiles.

Scott gives up and goes to sleep. Stiles still doesn’t sleep well or much; hasn’t since high school.

He wakes up to an excessively pointy elbow to the face. The room’s dark, Stiles is dead asleep, and Scott’s nose is bleeding. It stops even as Scott rolls away. He sighs, and staggers back to his own room, because they’ll both sleep better with space. Well, okay - Stiles will sleep better with space. Scott will sleep better away from Stiles’ pointy bits. He crawls under the blankets, muffling a whine at the chill, and falls back asleep.

 


	6. Ralph

The breakfast buffet is heavy on the grease and protein, which is pretty much how he likes it. Even better: the breakfast room is fairly empty, the fancy Beacon Hills emissary one of the few other people in the room. He’s staring at a cup of coffee like it holds all the secrets of the universe. Ralph fills a plate and walks to his table. “Okay if I join you?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah.”

Ralph deliberately eats a bite of ketchup-covered eggs. “So this is your first time here?”

The emissary puts his head down on the table so he’s basically hiding behind his coffee cup. “If you didn’t know who I was you’d have sat at another table.”

“Fair enough. Bacon?”

He hesitates, then grabs a piece of bacon from Ralph’s plate. He chews it slowly, and Ralph watches him as he eats his own breakfast. The emissary looks exhausted, more than the humans usually do after even a full convention weekend. Ralph asks, “So why is this your first time here? You’ve had the job a couple years.”

He gestures vaguely. “Too much to do. Hunters, mid-terms, berserkers.”

Ralph looks at the remains of his eggs. “I’d think that allies would have helped.”

“First six werewolves we met that Scott didn’t make tried to kill us. The next one we met after that cheated at lacrosse,” he says cheerfully. “Now, what’s your name? We should pretend to be civilized and introduce ourselves.”

Ralph sits back and smiles. “I’m Ralph. From Chicago. So you play lacrosse?”

“Stiles. And yeah, all through high school and a bit at university. So we’ve got a packmate who’s been offered some time at Fermilab. Is that still university rules, and if not, would you be the person to talk to?”

Ralph blinks at him.

 


	7. Brad

Brad is only a little afraid of the emissary. Like, it’s a totally rational fear, too: the dude is like a live wire and he used to be a demon or something. Approaching the young, volatile alpha werewolf is the logical choice.

The alpha is wearing Star Wars swim trunks when Brad finds him. Some kind of unofficial drunken pool meetup seems to have popped up, probably as a result of this dude blowing off a seminar. Brad rolls up the sleeves of his button-down, trying to look anywhere near as casual. He orders a beer from the poolside bar and forks over a bill before he starts to make his way over. Maybe he downs half of it, too.

He sidles up to the alpha’s side. “Uh, hello, Alpha McCall.”

“Yo. Call me Scott. Who’re you?”

“I’m Brad. So, uh, you guys have a nemeton, yeah?”

Scott blinks at him, and gestures to the free chair next to him. “Have a seat.”

Brad sits down on the edge of it and starts talking as fast as he can. “So I’m doing this research on energy profiles, and it’s the only nemeton currently undergoing major fluctuations, so -”

“Does your research involve murder in any way, shape, or form?”

Brad starts violently, because he could have sworn that no one was there, but now the emissary’s perched at the foot of the chaise longue. Brad’s not good at sensing magic, but he should have sensed this dude. “No?”

The emissary tilts his head back lazily, until his hair’s resting on the stomach of Derek Hale, who’s terrifyingly attractive and also terrifying in that he’s one of the Hales, the only bloodline that can shift to full wolves. “Did he sound sincere, Der?”

Hale just raises one terrifying eyebrow.

“Uh - um, I just want to take readings. And install a monitoring crystal, maybe?” The emissary is looking at him again, so he babbles. “Not to monitor you! Just the telluric currents. Just the currents that interact with the tree! If you’re doing anything with currents I don’t need to know, you don’t need to tell me anything - except it’d be better for my research if you did?”

“Hey, relax,” says Scott, smiling reassuringly. “That’d be fine. Do you need to visit?”

He winces pre-emptively. “That’d be best? Like, um, it doesn’t have to be long, but I don’t - the layout -”

“‘S all good, dude. Why don’t you get Stiles’ number and we can all set stuff up after the conference?”

Brad swallows hard and looks at Stiles. “Um, sure?”

Stiles takes down his number, and Derek Hale just sort of looms behind him. It’s all kind of terrifying. Stiles texts him a little smiley emoticon that may or may not be some kind of death threat, and Brad saves the number.

“So, um, I should - there’s a talk my alpha wants me to go to in ten minutes.” Brad flees without permission, but no one rips his throat out, and he’s profoundly grateful.

 


	8. Deaton

Alan is technically on call, but his vet tech is pretty capable and it’s not the holidays, so people are less inclined to accidentally poison their pets. Which means that he’s working in the garden when he gets the call from Yasmin. “What is wrong with you how could you have trained him?”

“Hello, Yasmin. So you’ve met Mister Stilinski?”

“He has almost as much power as the DuPont pack emissary with their nemeton, and the control of a six year old!” She sounds like she’s trying to keep her voice down, probably to avoid the hearing of the various werewolves in residence.

Alan pats in more of his compost mix around the newly-transplanted foxglove. “The aura’s not a control problem, Yasmin. How’s your niece?”

She sputters a bit, and he understands. The way Stiles wears his power is significantly more external than most. But he can make yarrow do most anything he wants, with enough nuance, now, to be reassuring. Sometimes he still makes yarrow do multiple things at once, but that’s a problem of focus, not control. Alan has learned a fair bit of the difference, trying to train him.

“She’s fine,” Yasmin says grudgingly. “The talisman you sent helped with her control issues. She’s looking forward to Prom, despite the lunar cycle it falls on.”

“That’s wonderful. Give her my best.” He hangs up on her with that. Yasmin’s a little high-strung, and would spiral forever fretting about Stiles if he let her. He’s surprised, though, that she’s the only one he’s heard from. If Stiles has been there eighteen hours and only violently alarmed one of Alan’s contacts, he must be behaving himself extraordinarily well. Alan is proud. Scott, he knew, was prepared to represent himself and his pack, demonstrate his leadership and get guidance from other wolves without putting himself in danger. Scott had been prepared for a few years, now, which was why they’d been waiting for Stiles to feel confident.

Alan absently pulls a weed at the edge of the bed. Retirement is good.

 


	9. Derek

Stiles smells like petrichor and lightning, and Derek still wants to roll around in it. He’s kind of attached himself to Stiles for the whole morning, and he should probably be embarrassed about it, but can’t bring himself to care. Laura hasn’t said anything, anyway; hasn’t even sent him any judgmental looks. Which she shouldn’t. Even with the ink not even laid down on an official alliance, the Beacon Hills pack are their strongest allies, so it’s only fitting that Derek spend time with their emissary.

Derek’s desire to spend time with their emissary naked is neither here nor there. He has some hopes, about the end of the weekend, or maybe later, if they exchange numbers, but in the meantime it’s fascinating just to watch him. They’re in the When The Bite Goes Wrong: grieving and loss in pack-building panel, and Stiles is sitting there looking sharp-edged as the first panelist talks about biting her human sister.

They get through another story, a really sad one about losing kids and having to accept that it’s a risk, which is why informed consent - whatever. The point is that Stiles sticks up his hand and starts talking before anyone can even acknowledge him. “So, like, how often does the bite go kanima-wrong? Is there a way to predict that?”

The room goes devastated-quiet. Derek is shocked that he’d even mention it and sad for Stiles, but also a little in love with the way his heartbeat doesn’t change under all the scrutiny.

“Ah,” says Alpha Thornwood, who Derek’s never seen hesitate before. “Well, we’ve only heard of one in the last hundred and fifty years, so it’s not a frequent occurrence. Typically, the variations in personality only affect the shape a shifter takes in terms of how, well, monstrous they look. Shifts aside from the standard beta form are rare, to say the least. When a person is bitten, either they turn or they die.”

Stiles half-raises his hand again. “Actually, no, banshees don’t turn or die. It does open them up to major mind-fuckery from their alpha, though. So, like, I guess make sure you’re turning a human?”

Derek wants to wrap Stiles up in a blanket and stash him somewhere warm and safe, far away from Beacon Hills. Beacon Hills is probably the most trauma-inducing town on the West Coast, and part of it’s Derek’s fault, for letting Kate in, because he doesn’t remember it being that awful when he was a kid. He shifts in his seat restlessly, because no matter how much he talks it through, it’s always going to bother him that he opened the door. Stiles puts a hand on his knee. It’s casual in a way that’s not, and utterly possessive. A slow curl of heat starts to unfurl low in Derek’s stomach. This is going to be so good, when they get down to it.

Stiles doesn’t interrupt for the rest of the panel, just takes notes on his phone one-handed. The other hand doesn’t leave Derek’s knee, which Derek is content with.

Stiles is one of the first people out of the room as soon as the panel ends, and Derek follows him. He’s used to trailing in Laura’s wake, but it’s wholly different trailing Stiles. For one, people _look_ at them, curiosity and nerves alike writ on their faces. Another thing is that Stiles is - well, okay, Derek grew up with mostly werewolves, but it’s not like he hasn’t spent time around humans, and they’re not usually this clumsy. Or maybe Stiles is just trying to do too many things: he’s getting a status report from someone at home and reading his program and trying to walk at the same time, and he walks straight into one of the potted trees in the hall.

Derek reaches out a hand to grab his elbow, to catch him, but stops before he can touch him. As forward as Stiles has been, he’s still McCall’s emissary, and it’d still be - impolite, at the very least, to get his scent on Stiles without more explicit permission than walking into something. They’ve been flirting with this, and pushing the edges of propriety, but Derek - they’re in public right now, or semi-public, and this is Stiles’ show.

When he’s back firmly on his feet and looking around, Stiles gives him a speculative look. Derek shoves his hands in his pockets. “So,” says Stiles, “I’ve got nothing I want to go to until the reception at 5. You got anywhere to be?”

A thrum starts up along Derek’s spine. “Nothing I need to do.” Laura had wanted him to go to a couple panels, but the only ones that had been critical rather than time-fillers are one late tonight and one tomorrow morning, and this - this would be better than the panels for this afternoon even if Laura _had_ deemed them critical.

Stiles smiles predatorily. “Wanna come back to our suite? Someone bumped us up, so I’ve got a _very_ comfortable room all to myself.”

“Yeah,” Derek breathes.

Stiles’ eyes go liquid, and he takes Derek’s arm and leads him to the elevator. Somehow, by the time they get on, they’re holding hands. There’s an alpha there who looks at Stiles like he’s - well, like he’s Stiles, unpredictable and unknown and possibly dangerous. It’s strange to see it on an alpha, because they don’t back down for humans, and it’s a little thrilling. He presses closer to Stiles after Stiles has swiped his keycard for the top floor. The alpha’s gaze flicks to him, and Derek lets a corner of his mouth quirk up. Not enough for a direct challenge, but close.

The alpha gets off on the fourth floor. When the doors close, Stiles looks at him, eyes bright with amusement.

Derek shrugs. “Getting cozy with the emissary who’s scaring the shit out of everyone reminds people that the Hales used to be respected.”

Stiles turns to face him fully, pressing against him chest to chest. “Yeah? And is that the only reason you’re getting close to me?”

There’s no worry in him, no suspicion. So Derek has no compunctions about dipping his head, running his nose up the side of Stiles’ neck until his mouth is next to his ear, and murmuring, “Absolutely.”

Derek’s hands are on Stiles’ hips, which he doesn’t even notice until Stiles jerks backwards with the force of his laughter.

Stiles leans in to kiss him, and it’s sweet and full of promise.

 


	10. Lydia

Lydia’s had her phone on all weekend, with her and ringer on. It’s not that she doesn’t trust Scott and Stiles, because she does, implicitly and with her life. It’s that a werewolf conference is probably not like a math conference, and Deaton is supremely shady so his evaluation of this conference as unlikely to result in physical harm is deeply suspicious.

So when Scott calls, late Saturday night, she picks up on the first ring. “What do you need?”

“I think they’re having sex,” Scott hisses.

Lydia rolls her eyes. “Is this an actual crisis or a crisis of having to overhear him?”

“I really like my room,” he whines.

“Suck it up, honey. Go be social.” She feels a burst of affection at his whining. They are both the most ridiculous dorks.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Alpha and Emissary](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6350773) by [annapods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/annapods/pseuds/annapods)




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